Category Archives: Books

Choice Reading: Create Readers, not Sparknoters

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Books, High School, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Uncategorized | , , , ,

Choice Reading or Bust

Choice reading is the hill I’m willing to die on. I said it my first year of teaching, rather glibly, but I still believe wholeheartedly in the practice. 

Choice reading, SSR (sustained silent reading) or the like, often goes away after middle school, as the pressure of curriculum inevitably mounts. But, I don’t think the pressure to read and analyze Lord of the Flies is alleviated by removing choice reading. 

Students build reading stamina by reading what they want, not by Spark Noting something they have no interest in.

Instead, according to a graduate paper at Bridgewater State University, and what I have seen anecdotally in my own classroom, “When given more choice, students respond more positively, feel motivated to read and are more likely to engage in class discussions and activities.” 

Although I am definitely the kind of English teacher that would like to do away with the canon and textbooks altogether, I also know that as an employed professional, there are many rules I can bend, but a few I probably shouldn’t break altogether. 

Enter, choice reading. 

High-Engagement, Low-Stakes 

Choice reading is definitely not a new concept. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has a statement supporting it, claiming the benefits for reading stamina, language development, and cognitive challenge. 

NCTE explains that, “Student choice in text is essential because it motivates, engages, and reaches a wide variety of readers.” 

Even if I had unlimited funds to buy new books every year, it would still be nearly impossible to choose a few whole class novels that truly fit the “wide variety of readers” in my classroom. 

NCTE goes on to explain that choice reading is meant to “build habitual readers with conscious reading identities” and allow students to “practice reading skills in a high-engagement, low-stakes environment.” 

I take this focus to heart in my classroom.  

We read every Friday, and students don’t need to do anything other than read and answer a quick reflection. I implemented the reflection this year, a simple Google form, as a way to help them track what they read. I also always throw in a question that helps me do an SEL check in (What are you proud of this week? What’s something you’re going to do to take care of yourself this weekend?)  

At the end of the quarter, they need to have finished at least one book. Then, they do a book talk with our librarian. She asks them a few comprehension and interest questions and picks a passage for them to explain. We do these talks in small groups to help students practice speaking in front of peers and normalize talking about what we’re reading. 

And, that’s all the accountability I ask for. I don’t have page number requirements and, yes, graphic novels absolutely count. 

Create Readers, not Sparknoters 

While some of my colleagues argue that reading certain texts shouldn’t necessarily be fun, students just need to learn how to “buckle down” and focus, I’m too much of a realist to agree. I know that “buckling down” might look like Googling a summary, which doesn’t solve anything.

Teaching the canon, and only the canon is a classic (no pun intended) case of pounding a square peg into a round hole. 

Edutopia writes that “the disconnect between the canon and its intended audience has become an epidemic, driven by rapid changes in the composition of American schools and the emergence of always-on digital platforms that vie for kids’ attention. By middle and high school, teachers concede, many of today’s students simply aren’t reading at all.” 

All educators know that these “digital platforms” have increased exponentially since that article was published in 2019. We are constantly vying for our students’ attention, desperate to pull them away from their screens.

So, when a student walks into my room on Friday, pockets their phone and says, “Oh, yeah, it’s choice reading day. Sweet!” I can’t help but call that a win. 

The Joy of Reading 

My goal as an English teacher is to create lifelong readers. They don’t all need to love reading novels or highlighting nonfiction like I do. But, they will all have myriad opportunities to flex their reading muscles in almost every facet of their lives–from job applications to voters pamphlets. I believe the attitudes and practices I foster around reading are critical. 

I’ve been teaching for six years, and every year, I hear so many responses from students like this: 

“I have always hated reading, but I actually like this one.” 

“Ms. Schaake, this is the first book I’ve actually read since like second grade.” 

*laughs during silent reading* “I can’t believe I just laughed. Out loud. To a book.” 


“Reading is like, cool, because you’re sort of making a movie in your head, you know?” 

My favorite so far this year comes from a student who’s very vocal about his ADHD, dislike of reading, and desire to be a Navy Seal. 

“I’ve never really felt empathy for a character in a book before. But, I seriously feel what he’s going through. I can’t put it down.” 

In today’s politically divisive, persistently digital world, we could all definitely also use more empathy, and more time to read. 

Caste: A Moral Call to Action

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Books, Equity, Professional Development, Social Issues, Teacher Leadership | , , , ,

The House We’ve Inherited 

I am an unapologetic book nerd. Perhaps this is not a surprising trait for an English teacher, but lately, I find myself diving into nonfiction with the same fervor as I would a captivating novel. It just seems there is always more to learn (and unlearn) and my reading list is infinitely growing. 

This past month, I had the opportunity to spend four weeks facilitating a small group discussion as a part of CSTP’s WERD book study of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. I can honestly say that reading this book has forever changed how I view our country’s past, present, and future. 

I know I can’t do this incredible book justice, so I won’t even attempt a poor summary here. Instead, I just strongly encourage everyone to read it. Especially educators. The caste system that Wilkerson lays out as the foundational framework of our nation has dire implications for every facet of our systems, including education.

Wilkerson has numerous apt metaphors for caste, but her analogy of America as an inherited old house particularly resonates with me. While it may seem beautiful from the outside, it has deep structural issues worn from generations and it’s maintenance can’t be ignored.

She writes, “Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built up around the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now. And, any further deterioration is, in fact, our hands” (Wilkerson 16).  

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard arguments such as “my grandparents didn’t own slaves” or “I’m not a racist, I love all my students,” which both are branches of the same tree. They work to distance the speaker from any accountability, and move them past uncomfortable feelings of shame toward more palatable places of ignorance and inaction.  

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A Window and a Mirror

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Books, Education

My journey to bring in contemporary literature from a different perspective than the monolithic racial identity of authors dominating our curriculum turned out to be more of a whirlwind than I expected: I submitted the book for District approval back in September, gained my principal’s support to purchase copies of the novel, and received official District approval in time to integrate the book into my sequence in November.

Now it is December, and already my seniors have wrapped up their final projects from our reading of There There by Tommy Orange.

In part because of the accelerated nature of my school’s schedule, we tore through the novel at breakneck pace, engaging in regular discussion and frequent journal writing. Like any time teaching new content, there were hits and misses. My overall mission was two-fold: One, expose students to a work of literary merit that offered voices and perspectives otherwise not present in their school experience, and two, examine the craft and structure of the novel itself in order to consider different approaches to storytelling.

My students’ responses were interesting. As with any book I’ve tried to teach, there is always a subset of kids who see themselves as “bad readers” and whose default position is to approach with skepticism and negativity. This identity is often quite crystallized by the time the reach me as 17-, 18-, or 19-year-old high school seniors. I’ve yet to find the right way to reach every student with a given text, but the boundaries of who connects and who doesn’t shift in interesting ways.

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Rethinking What I’ve Always Done

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Books, Education

It started with a Facebook conversation last winter.

Someone posted a New Yorker article from December 2018 questioning the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the character Atticus Finch’s place in literary and cultural history. It sparked quite a conversation about this fictional character who I have so enjoyed exploring with my 9th graders for the last 16 years.

[Quick recap: Mockingbird is narrated by Scout Finch, who recounts her early childhood as she and her brother Jem are faced with the dark realities of race in 1930s Alabama when their lawyer father, Atticus, chooses to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.]

The social media conversation wandered into the why and how behind our teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I casually commented that “TKAM is much more about Jem’s coming of age rather than Scout’s… I feel like Jem is really the main character even though Scout is the narrator.”

A reply from a fellow English teacher opened my eyes to a new perspective:

“That’s exactly the problem!” She wrote, “Even when we teach books with girls as narrators they are still focused on the lives and experiences of boys!”

Ten years ago, I would have probably brushed off this comment…or worse, leapt to argument: So what if Jem (a boy) is the main character? What’s the big deal?

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Teach Challenging Books

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Books, Current Affairs, Literacy

I first floated the idea of teaching Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric at Lincoln on The Nerd Farm podcast. One major point of discussion was that despite being first published in 2014, the urgency of this book is felt on every page. It feels like it was written for this moment.

Within a few short weeks, listeners flooded the mailroom with donated copies. I was a little nervous. I teach about race, class, and gender but I’ve never taught a book like this. I’ve taught poetry but I’ve never experienced a book of poetry that defies what I learned in college. In the back of my mind lingered the most daunting question of all: can I, a white woman, do justice teaching a book about racism, microaggressions,and intersectionality?

Not one to shirk challenge, I talked my student teacher into team-teaching the text. We found exactly three resources for teaching this text–a reading guide from Graywolf Press and two teacher blog posts from higher ed. For one month, my juniors wrestled with the language, structure, and themes of this book.

Despite the unfamiliarity of poetry as a genre and the “untraditional” way Rankine breaks any expectations of form, Rankine is accessible in a high school classroom setting. Every high school student needs to experience poetry, art, and language the way Rankine creates it. This year when I prepped for the unit, I found, more articles from college level classes, and several university teacher guides signaling to me that I’m not the only one feeling the timeliness of this text.

With the rise of hate crimes, public displays of racism and the casual way these are presented by media, I’m especially convinced that now more than ever, students and teachers need to grapple open and honestly with the discomfort of these issues. In particular, white teachers should teach books that make them uncomfortable or are out of their “range of expertise.”

For students of color, they tell me they need this book because it validates their daily existence. They want to read a Black author who excels at the art of language. They want to feel they are not alone.

For white kids, they need to see a black artist at the highest level. They need to be challenged as perpetrators and beneficiaries of white supremacy. They need to consider how intersectionality shifts and shapes power.

For teachers, we need to teach books outside our comfort zones be in content or style. We need to use our platform in the classroom to amplify authors our students might never experience.

For white teachers, we need to create safe spaces to have open and honest discussions about race in America–where we aren’t threatened by disagreement, where students of color feel confident expressing their thoughts, and where we don’t’ “not all white people” the conversation.

Instead of being fearful of these difficult conversations, we need to be brave. No matter what race we are, we need to collectively read and discuss more books like Citizen. Maybe then we will actually do something to loosen the grip of racism on our country.

On Leveraging Technology part four of several—the problems of addiction

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Books, Current Affairs, Education, Literacy, Social Issues, Web/Tech

I’ve been thinking about addiction lately, and cannot help seeing my students constantly gazing into their palms as anything but problematic. As I’ve been musing about technology in the classroom this year, basic concerns about screen-time, as well as ideas about maximizing the technology as a benefit for education have come up, but in March (the longest and toughest month for everyone involved in education) concerning addictive behavior is at the forefront.

Students cannot seem to stop looking at their phone. I get the impulse, and spend a great deal of time on computers as well, less on the phone because of personal dislike of the medium. Sven Birkerts and Nicholas Carr worried about this years ago, and the research started in the recent past is playing out their fears—as evidenced in this study by Lin and Zhou: “Taken together, [studies show] internet addiction is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions involving emotional processing, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control.” Another study recently brought to my attention by a child occupational therapist, shows us that screens light up the same regions of the brain that cocaine sets afire. And science shows us addictive video games may change children’s brains in the same way as drugs and alcohol.

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On Leveraging Technology: part two of several–does it really help?

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Books, Education, Education Policy, Literacy, Web/Tech

To leverage is to use the power or force of a lever in the literal sense, and in the figurative—to advantage for accomplishing a purpose. This is a great educational word.

I once had a mentor tell me I should teach every day as if a parent were standing in the doorway demanding excellence for their child. This is a great educational standard. It is also a recipe for failure, which I’m ok with (as I’ve blogged about before, twice). The truth is, the days I really use technology in the classroom are the days I would never want a parent standing at the door.

A newsletter comes home every week from my children’s teachers. Lately, they are full of pictures. The most recent newsletter is full of pictures of students “doing science.” 50% of the pictures are of kids looking at screens. It is not an image of kids doing anything observable.

The image of my classroom or my children’s classroom should not trouble me if the technology is being leveraged, if the technology is being used to advantage to accomplish a purpose. I teach English and sometimes students are staring at books in my classroom, and other times computer screens. I completely get it is part of the fabric of a class. The trouble I have, more often than not, is with the word advantage. An old French word, advantage means a positon in advance of another. It means profit or superiority. It means before. More often than not my lessons that use technology could be carried out on paper. What advantage is the technology? It saves me deciphering handwriting. It is faster, mostly. This begs the question—why is speed something to value in learning?

My son has a lesson on water, and the way it forms land. The class starts on the computers looking at photos of Mars. Amazing. They observe how the land is shaped, determine there is sedimentary rock in a channel (full disclosure I don’t understand how they determined this) and deduce it was shaped thus by water. The homework is to look around their neighborhood, or town and describe land formed by water. This strikes me as odd, it seems the reverse path practicing scientists take. Don’t practitioners observe their world around them and then make connections to new discoveries and distant objects? My son can describe how water forms land, but does he understand how science works? How scientists have used observation since Galileo? He’s 13, what lesson is the most valuable? It didn’t take long for him to learn how water forms land, but did he miss out on a larger, more important understanding? It is possible I’m being persnickety, but I can’t shake the feeling the technology was used to be used and not necessarily used to the advantage of student learning. I’m not so much questioning a colleague’s choices here, as playing the role of parent in the doorway.

What advantage can these machines provide? How do I, as a classroom teacher, rectify the research showing the use of computers does not help much? It seems computers do not increase understanding any faster than any other educational innovation. The results of a seven-year study of the most scrutinized laptop 1:1 program showed laptops allowed test scores to raise at about the same rate as other counties without them:

“Test scores did go up a lot in Mooresville after 2008, when it started handing out laptops. But Hull calculated that test scores also soared by about the same amount in neighboring counties, which didn’t give laptops to each student.”

Additionally, Jill Barshay notes that the computer implementation had a negative impact on how much time students read books:

“From student surveys, the researchers found that Mooresville students reduced their time reading books by more than four minutes a day, on average, to roughly 40 minutes a daily in 2011 from more than 45 minutes daily when the laptop program was introduced. Meanwhile, kids in neighboring counties increased their daily reading by two minutes.  Four minutes might not sound like a lot, but over the course of a year that adds up to more than 25 fewer hours of reading, which is substantial. Unfortunately, the state stopped administering that survey after 2011 and it’s unknown if book reading rebounded.  But if time spent reading continued to deteriorate, that could partially explain why reading scores didn’t rise as much as the math scores did.”

I suppose this is natural, the new technology will eclipse the old. As mentioned above, I’m a bibliophile, so this sort of news is personally heartbreaking, but I recognize it is not for everyone. But even the lightest research yields rafts of studies where brain researchers are determining that, at best, the results of reading from a screen are only equal to reading from the page. The screen offers no advantage. The more troubling problem arises when one notes these even results occur when testing for basic comprehension not more complex understanding. Even then, the device sometimes can get in the way of the content. Students often report on how they use the device, and then on the content the device provided. The larger problem is, when asked more sophisticated questions, as described in Naomi Barron’s New Republic article, Why Digital Reading is no Substitute for Print, print wins every time. So, the clearest conclusion here is integration of technology succeeds most clearly in pushing out a more successful technology.

Barshay again:

“Students continued to spend as much time on homework as before but spent more of their homework time on a computer.”

The New Republic findings indicate this homework time is less productive, less focused, and equally concerning is this conclusion from Barshay:

“… the highest achievers and lowest achievers didn’t benefit more from the laptops than average students. One of the arguments ed tech advocates make is that educational software can help slower learners review material while quicker learners jump ahead to new topics, with each student learning at his own pace. But the researchers didn’t see stronger test score gains among the bottom quarter or the top quarter of students relative to students in the middle. They did notice, however, that higher performing students were more likely to increase their time on computers.”

The device succeeds most at encouraging more time on the device. A New Jersey school district (also reported on by Barshay) ditched the 1:1 program altogether. The device has some advantages, and is more popular, yet brain research holds with paper. This is not just the preference of luddites and bibliophiles. The long term scientific brain studies are continually reaching the same conclusions previously reached by authors such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Sven Brikerts, and Nicholas Carr in their fiction and memoirs across nearly 80 years. How do we leverage something not offering a clear advantage? Huxley and Neil Postman would argue that what we love will destroy us. Birkerts and Carr posit our love of technology is leaving us with a lack of depth. I suppose I’m arguing that we’re missing the important points. My son misses out on a clear experience of the scientific process, my students type drafts and feel they are done because they look done (all typed up neat and clean), and when we read from the screen we receive diminishing returns. I find irony in the fact that the term “leverage technology” comes out of a program adopted by my district titled “deep learning.” It seems technology is great for many things, but depth is not one of them.

So, in addition to my previous questions, we’re left with this: technology is here, and it will remain. How do we leverage it both in the classroom and in personal space so it works to our advantage and does not inhibit our learning and engagement with our lives? I’ve found some terms and am reading some research I will parse in my next post that attempt to offer some possible answers to this troubling situation.

 

On Leveraging Technology: part one of several–some background

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Books, Education, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Parent Involvment, Television, Web/Tech

This year I have more technology in my room than I have ever had in fifteen years of teaching. I don’t know how I feel about it. The phrase in my district is “leverage technology.” I like this quite a lot, especially in contrast to the experience my own children are having in a different district. My children’s district decided to go one-to-one. Technology immersion, seems to be the tactic. It has been a rough transition. As a parent who has used technology mindfully, and been very deliberate about my kid’s exposure to technology, seeing my child use it all the time because he “has to for school” is unnerving. I want to spend some time analyzing these two approaches, and see what I can figure out (if anything). But this post is just background, the setting of the stage.

My early mantra around technology for my personal life and for my classroom was: technology must enhance what I’m doing not distract me from it. I’m not convinced we’ve figured out how to do this in education, as a system. I’m mostly positive a few individuals have figured this out. I’m in the process.

I want to be clear: I am not anti-technology. I coupled my English major with a computer science minor and used contractor jobs building websites to help pay off my student loans. Though I write often in a notebook, all my writing eventually is on a computer. I did resist a cell phone for years, mostly because I didn’t want something else to carry. I teach and have taught hybrid and fully online classes for years. Though, my family hasn’t owned a television in fifteen years.

I am of an age where I can remember the world pre-internet, as I’m sure many readers of this blog are, but I mention it because watching the web come into being taught me something about how I would use it. I lost friends to computers. They just became more interested in the machine and then we spent less and less time together. Nothing too serious, or out of the ordinary coming-of-age stuff, but I noticed. Then, in college, I read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and, being the serious minded young person I was, I thought hard about both the messages I received and the medium through which I received them.

Then I started teaching. I’ve had varying access to technology over the years, and I’ve used much of it. I’ve had a bank of computers, a smartboard, a small cache of laptops (webbooks they were called). But as the technology wore out, I did not feel a pressing need to replace it. It provided a way to do things, not necessarily a better way—as far as I could tell. Besides, a computer lab full of students, oddly silent, staring at monitors creeped me out. I only did it when it made sense—typing final drafts, et. all. Continue reading →

Find a Mirror, Peek Through a Window, & Open a Sliding Door

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Books, Literacy, Travel

For me, summertime = reading time.

During the school year, I can’t keep up with the growing stacks of books precariously balanced on my nightstand. So in the summer, I set a goal of reading 5-10 books. My pattern is consistent—usually some young adult fiction to add to my classroom library (All American Boys, Ms. Marvel Vol 1), something political (Evicted), something I meant to read ages ago (Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, Orange is the New Black), a friend recommendation (Number One Chinese Restaurant), a “teacher” book (I’ll read that one mid-August), a book I only half-finished years ago (Whistling Vivaldi) and a mindless beach read (Matchmaking for Beginners, Girl Logic).

Despite burying myself in non-school related books, I don’t stop thinking about the work. I know, I know. Like many teachers, even when I’m “off”, I’m still on. No matter how much I try to avoid thinking about my classroom and my students (even with my mindless, beach reads), my mind wanders back. When I read, I imagine faces of students who would ____. I mull over ways I could use a certain chapter in my unit on ___. After years, I’ve finally accepted that reading and reflecting during the summer is part of my “self-care” plan.

And so this summer, I met 2014 Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American, Muslim teenage girl struggling to balance faith, family, and friends. I deepened my understanding of the American housing crisis and how evictions disproportionately impact Black women. I ruminated on the meaning of love and how to express it to those closest to me. I reflected on the meaning of identity threat, and how stigmatization directly impacts student success in my classroom.

Summertime is also prime travel time. My husband and I make it a priority to grab our passports and get out of town. The magic of travel is that it literally transports you to a different world. Eating Korean BBQ on South Tacoma Way or ordering Tom Kha in East Tacoma is not quite enough to understand what it means to be Korean or Thai. Breathing Bangkok air, sitting in Kuala Lumper traffic, visiting the S-21  Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh puts you face-to-face with people, culture, and history in a new way.

Both the acts of reading about and physically traveling to another world, always refreshes my perspective. I might arrive with preconceived notions about a certain group or culture based on my previous experience or my hours scouring a Lonely Planet guidebook and TripAdvisor pages. But I always leave with a greater understanding of systems, an empathy for human struggle, and a realignment of my own values with what actually matters. Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” This is the main reason I continue to get out of dodge each summer and sweet-talk my friends into going abroad. For students, there are more complications than simply applying for a passport and buying a ticket to Beijing.

Literacy experts use the phrase Windows & Mirrors when referring to the way a reader engages with a book. This concept was actually developed by Dr. Rudine Bishop in her essay Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors. Essentially, a book can help you see yourself, your family, your community or your values (mirror). A text might serve as a window, peeking into someone else’s life and learning about another world. Finally, a novel could work as a sliding door–at first giving you a peak into another realm, then sliding open so you can walk through it (think Butler or Tolkien). I’ve made it a reading habit to ask myself is this text meant to be a mirror, a window, or a sliding glass door? For whom? As a reader, I want mirrors to feel a sense of personal validation (that’s easy for me to find since I’m a white female). As a reader and an educator I know I need more windows and sliding doors in my life to help me be a better teacher.

And so this summer, I once again remember that while I still believe everyone should travel abroad, I know not everyone can. As the new school year approaches, I accept my responsibility as a teacher to construct classroom experiences that transport students to new worlds, even for a few days. Besides showing pictures and sharing stories, I can make instructional choices such as incorporating more diverse texts as mainstream curriculum. We must intentionally find windows, mirrors, and sliding doors for each learner.

Right Book. Right Group. Right Time

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Books, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Literacy

I’d had my heart set on reading To Kill a Mockingbird to my current eighth graders since last spring. Thanks largely to Nancie Atwell’s influence (see The Reading Zone, 2007), I no longer assign whole class novels. Instead, read-alouds allow for an accessible whole class experience that supplements students’ independent reading. I know I am lucky to teach at a school where I am trusted to make such pedagogical and curricular decisions.

Although it had been a long time since I’d read it, I was confident that To Kill a Mockingbird would be a valuable literary experience. It would also offer opportunities to connect to and discuss current issues of racism and the justice system. When I revisited it, however, I noticed several challenges. There’s the matter of the narrator’s southern accent, which I knew I could not pull off. There is also dialect and the N-word. I prepped the kids for it, gave them a lot of contextual information, and decided to use an audio recording. Despite those efforts, the kids were disengaged. Whenever I paused for discussion, my usually opinionated and insightful students remained silent. After a couple of days, they asked me to abandon the audio recording and read it aloud myself. I tried, but they were still disengaged. At that point, Anisa said, “Jessie, we know this is a book you really like, but do you think you could choose a book that we would like?”

I grappled with that question for the rest of the day. Did we just need to give the book more time, or was it truly not the right book?

I remember the year I used David James Duncan’s The River Why with ninth graders. I had loved that book, and I was certain that everyone in a pre-Advanced Placement English class would love it too.  After all, what adolescents wouldn’t love a coming-of-age story full of humor, self-discovery, and romance? I could not have been more wrong. The kids hated it. They did not connect with the main character; the humor was too sophisticated. There was a near revolt.

My selection of Angela’s Ashes, on the other hand, was transformative for my juniors and seniors, who could both appreciate the humor and empathize with the depictions of extreme poverty. What had been a disconnected, disengaged group of students developed community and confidence. That was when I learned the power of the right book for the right group at the right time.

Are there some books that are universally the right book? Maybe. It seems that every group of seventh graders loves The Outsiders. But most of the time, I have to start with my group of students in mind, and search for the book that will be the right match. I had forgotten to do that when I selected To Kill a Mockingbird, and then, against my better judgment, I continued to put the curriculum ahead of the students. Anisa’s question gave me the jolt I needed to change course. The next morning, I told the kids that I valued To Kill a Mockingbird and hoped they would each choose to read it at some point, but I could see that it was not the right book for the class at this time.

Wanting to get us back into our read-aloud groove, I pivoted to Wonder by R.J. Palacio. It is engaging, but lacks the literary heft I know my students are ready for and need. During a discussion about what makes a book interesting, Yasmin mentioned Of Mice and Men as an example of a book that had a powerful emotional impact. Isaac and Steven agreed. Yasmin then bounced out of her seat, saying Of Mice and Men should be our next read aloud book. I looked at Isaac and Steven who nodded vigorously. I’d been considering Of Mice and Men. The students’ enthusiastic endorsement settled the matter.

I imagine that there are individuals who would see this course of events as a reason not to trust teachers’ professional judgment, and instead to centralize all decisions about instructional materials at the district or school board level. For me it has the opposite effect. It makes me think about the absurdity of individuals far removed from classrooms making decisions about text selections. If I, who know my students deeply, can occasionally make the wrong choice, how could it be alright to leave the decision making to individuals who don’t know my students at all?

In this age of teacher-proofing and mandated curricula, I am curious about other teachers’ experiences. Are you able to make decisions about what will be the right book for the group in front of you? How do top-down decisions about curricula affect your and your students’ experiences?

Oh, and if you have any middle school read-aloud recommendations, please pass those along too.